


Lost At Sea

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Bright Young Things
Genre: Banter, Cute, Fluff, M/M, Picnics, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 03:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Nina asks Adam to take Ginger out with him to a picnic.Ginger lands in the lap of one Miles Maitland.





	Lost At Sea

“And you might as well take Ginger with you, so that he doesn’t bother _me_ ,” said Nina, and I looked up at her from the breakfast table. It was a fine Sunday morning, and she had joined me for breakfast at my lodgings due, in part, to the lateness of the hour, and in larger part due to her going abroad somewhere in the North for a few weeks, that we shouldn’t see each other for the duration.

“You can’t make it that he doesn’t bother you of your own accord?” I demanded, with more affront than I intended, and she gave me a severe look.

“I _could_ ,” she allowed, “but not without being very rude, and he really doesn’t deserve it, Adam.”

“Oh, but I mean… _Ginger_ ,” I said, as a man arguing the method of his execution. He had joined us initially, but was now across the room, talking with his strange, uncertain confidence to a handsome, green-eyed chap that had recently entered. Said chap seemed somewhat overwhelmed, but it was nothing to Ginger’s own palpable overwhelmedness. “I don’t know that he’ll like our friends.”

“He likes everyone,” Nina said charitably. “He pretends to, anyway.”

“Yes, well, I’m not sure _they’ll_ like him,” I replied. “And they certainly won’t pretend.”

“Please,” Nina said, and laid upon me such beautifully brown eyes that, as ever, I was spellbound, mystified, and bewitched all at once. “I couldn’t bear to be rude to him just before I go away. I should have to write him a dozen letters to make up for it, to spare myself the shame.”

“You can’t just be rude and leave the shame by the wayside?”

“Not really,” Nina said, with a light air of misery.

“Alright,” I assented, with a sigh. “I’ll invite him.”

\--

“Thanks awfully,” Ginger said, slightly stiffly, as if he was expecting the shot to the temple that naturally followed an invitation to an outing at any moment. He was not looking at me as we walked together from the train station, but instead scanning the countryside, as if expecting for some hired gunmen to set upon him, or perhaps a highwayman out of a story, or even a very large cat. The latter, after all, was the most likely to be within my own means, so long as it was a rugged tomcat of questionable heritage, and not a purebred beast. “Nina seemed to think I ought get some sun with you.”

“Well, there’s a great deal of it to go around,” I said with attempted cheer.

Ginger gave me a look with a great furrowing of the brow, as if to ask merely with said brow what it was I thought I was playing at, coming out with such nonsense as that, and then looked forward again.

Sighing my defeat, I led the way to the revelry.  

“ _Adam!”_ cried Agatha, and she caught me by the shoulders, kissing me with rather too much aggression on each cheek: if red marks bloomed there, know that they were bruises, and not stains from her lipstick, which in any case, Miles was wearing instead of her. “Who’s your friend?” she whispered in my ear. Her breath smelled of champagne, and it mingled surprisingly pleasantly with the cologne she and Miles had been sharing as of recent.

“His name’s Ginger,” I muttered with no small amount of injected despondency. “Nina bid me bring him so he wouldn’t follow her about like a dog.”

“And you must be _Ginger!”_ Agatha said brightly as she pulled away, her gloved hands spread wide as she set upon the invader. “Adam has often spoken of you!”

“Has he,” Ginger said, with undisguised suspicion, and Agatha grabbed him by the hand, striding with him through her friends and toward the picnic blankets that were spread upon the grass. Miles, to my surprise, did not have his customary lapwarmer of a handsome chap, and reclined alone with one leg outstretched, daintily taking drags of a cigarette that was butted with gold paper.

“You _must_ meet Miles,” Agatha said, as a priestess declaring the new initiate must be sacrificed immediately, and were that her sentiment, perhaps I would have agreed. I did not, in fact, abhor Ginger, except for finding him somewhat sad and at times a bore, but he had been stiff with me of late, and I so resented being made to bring him out with me that I probably would have let him fall into the Avon, let alone in the waiting arms of Miles Maitland, who was looking at him up and down with analytical gaze over the dark lenses of his spectacles.

“Hello, Adam,” he said, waving an airy hand for Ginger and I to join him on the blanket, which we did, I with some relief at being able to sit, for the day was overly warm and the walk from the train station had somewhat winded me – we would be driving back to London, in any case – and Ginger with uncertainty, as if he thought the picnic blanket, or possibly Miles, would devour him. In the latter, I suppose, he was not far off, because Miles was looking at him appraisingly. “Agatha—”

“Oh, Angela has arrived,” Agatha said with salacious relish.

“Oh, do be off from me, then,” Miles said, tossing his hair with faux-indignation. “Why should you be in my arms when you might be in hers?”

“I’ll take your arm later, you brute,” Agatha said, and kneeled for a moment, to kiss Miles’ head. He pinched her belly, and she laughed and shoved him, the two of them wrestling for a moment, as siblings do, before she used his shoulder as a brace to draw herself up once more, and jogged off in the direction of the girl. I saw her far off, in a floral dress and a wide sunhat, and wondered if she had worn the former purely for ease of access, as Agatha grabbed at the dress’ hem and drew it up higher upon meeting the girl, that she might drop and kiss each of her knees.

A strange habit. I had seen Agatha do it once and tested it upon Nina, but she’d only called me a madman – although her knees had proved ticklish, and I had performed the action in private to some aplomb. This girl giggled and laughed and threw her hands in Agatha’s hair, and went back onto the grass when Agatha tackled her thither.

“I am beset by ill mood,” Miles declared, drawing my attention away from the overaffectionate display.

“Oh?” I said.

“Quite. I am having a tiff with my tobacconist. Thus, you may notice, I take what little pleasure might be taken from these disdainful objects, instead of my usual.” He waved, with distaste, the gold-papered cigarette.

“Why, what’s wrong with your tobacconist?” I asked, leaning forward with my elbows against my knees.

“We are quarrelling.”

“Yes, I know what _tiff_ means. Why are you quarrelling?”

“I shan’t tell you.”

“Why ever not?”

“It’s the naughtiest thing.”

“All the more reason to tell me!”

“I’ll tell your friend,” Miles said. In speaking to me, for not a moment had his gaze left Ginger, and now, Ginger’s lips parted, making his moustache move most unpleasantly.

“He might not want you to,” I said.

“Don’t you?” Miles asked him.

“We haven’t been introduced,” Ginger said, holding out his hand. “I’m Ginger Littlejohn.”

“You don’t look ginger,” Miles said, blowing out a pretty puff of smoke and looking with distaste at Ginger’s outstretched hand. “What about the other thing?”

Ginger stared at him. Miles put out his left hand, palm down, and Ginger stared at it as if he thought it might bite him.

“He wants you to kiss it,” I supplied. Ginger stared at me, now, utterly agog. “What happened to Tiger?”

“Oh, I divorced him, or he divorced me, darling, I couldn’t possibly tell you which,” Miles said, his gaze to the sky. “In any case, we parted, and moreover I broke one of my favourite vases, because I threw it at the wall behind him and missed and hit his horrid shoulder, and he punched a hole through the four-fold screen.”

“I thought that was made of leather?”

“No, the four-fold was chinoiserie, made out of some light, fragile wood. You know the one, with the lovely birds, and the gold embossing? The third panel is quite destroyed, he always did have a brutish strength.”

“It can’t be repaired?”

“Alas, no,” Miles said, sighing.

“Divorced?” Ginger repeated.

“You are _handsome_ ,” Miles said, looking to Ginger quite intently. “Where _did_ you get those eyes of yours? They are devilishly good, you know, so dark and brooding, and I must say I do adore the cut of your eyelashes, and those cheekbones, goodness, I feel I might cut myself upon them if I seek to caress your cheek! Do you often cut men with your cheekbones, or do you fare better cutting them with your tongue?”

“What?” Ginger asked.

“He’s asking if you’re witty,” I said. “But he wants to make it clear he’s wittier, even if you are.”

“Oh,” Ginger said, and I saw his lip twitch. He was rather lost at sea with Miles, but I could see that the sea legs were swiftly incoming, even if he had to work through legs A- and B- first.

“You’re so unkind,” Miles said, with a moue on his painted lips.

“Only to you, Miles,” I said. “And only with affection. Are you drinking?”

“Tremendously,” Miles said. “What about you, Ginger?”

“Can we drink together?” Ginger asked. “You’ve not shaken my hand.”

“Well, you haven’t kissed mine,” Miles said.

“Do you have to be like this with every man you meet?” I asked wearily, reaching for a bottle of wine and pouring myself a glass.

“Not every man,” Miles murmured. “Shall I tell you why I’m quarrelling with my tobacconist, Mr Littlejohn?”

“Will you make me kiss your hand?”

“You shall kiss it sooner or later, dear.”

“Oh, will I?”

Ah, yes, Ginger really was learning to sail the turbulent Maitland seas, now.

I fancied I’d be able to make my escape at any moment. Talking with Miles was rather, I thought, like being a lion tamer – you had to have a stiff hold on your chair to keep him from ripping out your throat, but once you had the hang of it, it was really rather like a dance. Perhaps I’m mixing my metaphors. I don’t know that lions can swim.

“Well, I shall have to whisper in your ear,” Miles said. “To tell you, you know.”

“I won’t let you. Your lipstick will stain me. Why, anyway, are you wearing lipstick?”

“You darling naïf. So that I can mark my territory, of course.”

“Like a dog?”

“More like a man.” I handed Miles a glass of the red, which he took graciously before turning his smile back to Ginger, and saying, “Are _you_ in the market for a wife?”

“I’m in the market for a drink,” Ginger said, and Miles laughed, putting his cigarette into his mouth. I reached for the bottle to pour him a glass, but Miles was already leaning forward on his knees, touching the side of Ginger’s face and bringing the glass up to his mouth. He was often like this with men, overly affectionate, although not with me, and I watched Ginger startle, but then take a small sip from the glass. A few dregs of red clung to his moustache, and he delicately wiped it with a handkerchief.

“Ah,” Miles said sharply, withdrawing his hand from Ginger’s face and looking down at his palm. “You see, my dear, you _have_ cut me with that jaw of yours.”

“I haven’t!” Ginger said, horrified, and grabbed for Miles’ palm, which was, of course, quite uncut. “Oh.”

“ _Do_ kiss it better,” Miles said. “There’s a darling boy.”

Ginger laughed, looking at the soft lines of Miles’ palm, which he moisturised daily, but to my surprise, he shyly dipped his head and dusted a kiss onto the skin, like a bird dipping its head into a stream.

Miles _beamed_ , and then said, “We must be rid of that moustache, you know. It’s most repulsive, and I expect it makes it awfully hard to kiss you.”

“I don’t believe it’s an obstacle,” Ginger said, turning his gaze downward as he drew his hands away from Miles’.

“It is. I tell you, you hear of men coming from boats and kissing the grass and wild flowers, or rushing into chapels and kissing the cold stone, but they never kiss carpet, do they? That’s what kissing a fellow with a moustache is like.”

“How would _you_ know?”

“I make a study of these things.”

“What about your lipstick?”

“What about it, dear?”

“Is that no obstacle?”

“Why, no, it’s excellent fun, in fact. Shall I tell you about my tobacconist?”

“Please. I am on tenterhooks.”

“Oh, good. I shall have you on hot coals next.”

“You are _dreadful_ ,” Ginger proclaimed, but there was little rancour in it, and he was smiling in his shy, awkward, almost-confident way.

“I make a habit of it.”

“You ought stop.”

“Ought I? For your benefit?”

“For yours.”

“For _mine_? Why, my dear, it benefits me immensely to be dreadful. I have such fun!”

As Miles leaned in to murmur in Ginger’s ear, I laid back on the blanket, my gaze upturned to the sky. White clouds made their lazy promenade overhead, and I fancied I saw all manner of shapes drift past above me, until the shapes rather gave way to a different sort, because I had fallen asleep.

\--

I awoke, some hours later, to Miles gently patting my face, which I was grateful for, as Agatha was not the sort of woman who found it in herself to be gentle with men other than Miles himself, and she would have slapped me rather hard if she felt it would break my stupor anymore quickly. It would have, of course, but nonetheless, one likes to avoid these things, and I fancy I still felt the marks from her kiss.

“You must eat something,” Miles was saying. “Else Nina will write to me and tell me I’m cruel.”

“You are cruel,” I said, with lopsided smile.

“Well yes, but not to lovely things like you, Adam. You’re so pleasant to look at, it would be a crime against artistry to starve you.”

I sat up, rubbing at my eye, and I watched as Miles laid down again, his head in Ginger’s lap. Now and then, Ginger would feed him a grape, and Miles would, each time, giggle and touch his elbow.

“Tiger is forgotten, then?” I asked.

“Who, dear?” Miles said distractedly, looking beatifically up at Ginger’s face. Much as Miles had waxed poetic about it, I didn’t see anything especially handsome in it, but then, Miles had a funny view of the world no matter the subject.

“Yes,” I said, and looked about the party. Everyone was eating, now, but for Agatha, who was quite asleep upon the breast of the girl Angela, the two of them wearing matching crowns of daisies and buttercups, and Angela was absently stroking her hair as she read a book and ate some strawberries.

Reaching for a cucumber sandwich, I bit into it with some relish, chewing thoughtfully. Once I had swallowed the mouthful, I said, “So, what _is_ wrong with your tobacconist?”

“Oh, we’re quarrelling,” Miles said absently, in a dreamy sort of manner. To go back to the lion metaphor, as if it fits this better than the sea, Ginger was petting his hair, much as one might pet a lion, I suppose, if one and the lion in question were very good chums, and the lion was neither hungry nor of ill mood. Indeed, Miles’ ill mood seemed to have faded with the morning dew, and evaporated elsewhere.

“Why?”

“Well, I did something tremendously lovely to him, that I believe he rather enjoyed. It was quite naughty of me.”

I connected the mental dots of this statement, although I’m sure there were dots missing that I had not made the most of, and would later require Nina to fill in. “And…?” I prompted. “Why should that make him quarrel with you?”

“Well, I told him I wouldn’t do it again,” Miles said, and Ginger laughed. It was a loud, somewhat overexcited sort of laugh, a little airy, and it occurred that I had never seen him appear quite so giddy, even when he had been betting with me when first I had met him.

“That _was_ unkind of you,” I said.

“It was stupid,” Miles said, smoking a cigarette. It was not one of the gold-leafed things – it was one of Ginger’s. “I shall have to find a new tobacconist.”

“Serves you right,” I said.

“Yes, well, I must say, darling, I prefer the hand of Justice when it keeps to molesting others than myself. I prefer to be molested by much nicer hands than that. For instance—”

“ _Stop_ it,” Ginger whined, but the complaint was once more suffused with that strange giddiness, and I watched him giggle as Miles stained the inside of his wrist with lipstick. I looked back to my sandwiches, and resolved to write to Nina of the whole debacle.

\--

When next I saw Ginger, some weeks later, Miles was on his arm.

“I can’t seem to shake him off,” he said softly, almost shyly. He had shaved off the moustache, and I saw, now, the little birthmark on his lip. It was a blemish, I supposed, but no worse, really, than the moustache had been, and it was currently accessorised with a little smudge of lipstick.

Following my gaze, Miles coloured, his cheeks flushing red and lighting up the blush he was already wearing, and he hastened to wipe the bit of red wax away.

“You needn’t,” Ginger murmured, and I fancied that this time, I heard the giddiness in Miles’ laugh instead of Ginger’s.


End file.
